Barnes, L J. (2008). Lecture-free high school biology using an audience response system. The American Biology Teacher, 70(9), 531-536. SUMMARY:
Larry J. Barnes, the author of this article, is a sophomore Biology teacher at Wood River High School in Hailey, Idaho. Barnes was highly inspired by Thomas Lord’s constructivist teaching style in a college classroom setting. Barnes had made many earlier attempts in trying to drift away from the traditional teacher-centered classroom of lectures and note-taking. Barnes wanted to take some of the methods he has seen in many college classrooms and implement in his high school classes to create a more constructivist learning environment. For instance, one change he made was to eliminate the rows of single lined desks and place them in cooperative groups of 3 to 4 students instead. He would assign activities such as group problem solving where the cooperative groups were each given a biology problem at the beginning of the class that they had to work together on. He also tried a peer-teaching approach within each cooperative group, which seems to be very similar to that of “jigsaw”. With this, students would educate themselves on a topic in the unit they are currently studying and then teach their fellow group members. However, activities like this were soon eradicated because students showed signs of being lost when solving hard problems and some would simply recite the entire text when peer-teaching. This is when Barnes was introduced to the Audience Response System, or ARS.
The ARS is a new tool known to increase student engagement and participation. It is very popular at the college level, and Barnes wanted to see if he could implement it in a high school class. His study uses an ARS called Wisdom in hope that it will allow the elimination of lecture and note-taking methods. All students will experience both lecture-based and lecture-free teaching methods. Barnes will compare the assessments and learning gains from the experimental lecture-free group to the traditional lecture-based group.
The experiment consisted of a total of 43 students, who learned the material of three units by both lecture-based and lecture-free methods. A pre and post test was given to every student for all three units studied. Only the lecture-free and lecture-based method rotated in the classes, the classroom procedures, labs, policies, videos, etc. were exactly the same throughout the entire study. In the lecture-free classes, the students were in collaborative groups of 3 or 4, with a Qwisdom Q5 radio frequency remote for each student. Each unit, about 50 to 60 questions were answered using the remote, varying from multiple answers, multiple choice, numeric, and sequence-type. Student responses appeared on the teacher computer monitor immediately after they were being answered, so Barnes could monitor the student’s comprehension. Once all students’ Qwisdom scores were between 70 and 100%, he revealed the answers and reviewed the answers that students seemed to struggle with. In the lecture-based method, Barnes used PowerPoint notes. He handed out outlines that were only partly filled in. During the lecture, the students, still in cooperative learning groups, had to fill in the missing information. Barnes observed a lot of passive behavior during the lecture, because many students worked with their team to fill in as much information as they could before the lecture began.
After surveying the students about their views, it seems they favored the lecture-free method over the lecture-based. Students said they learned more and had to think for themselves more with the lecture-free method. A small percentage thought the lecture-free was slightly more frustrating. It was unanimous however, that the students all enjoyed working in small groups with the electronic remotes, rather than individually answering work sheet type questions. The results of the learning gains from the lecture-free method were not significantly higher than the lecture-based method as previously suggested to be. The two methods had almost equal learning gains in the end, with the lecture-free method being only slightly higher. However, since the students seemed to show great interest in the ARS, and their participation and attention levels were higher, I believe it is a great method to implement in today’s high school classrooms, still having to take in financial standings of schools.
REACTION:
In my opinion, I think introducing new methods in the classroom is a great idea. Not only does it capture the students’ interest, but it keeps things fun, new, and exciting. Making use of the new technology in the world is very important to the education of students’ today. Having something like this handheld electronic remote is a successful way in improving student participation, they want to answer the questions because they want to use the remote. However, just as with everything else, if you do something all the time and over use a particular method, it is going to get old and boring. I think the ARS is a great new teaching method, but I do not think that it should replace lectures and note-taking entirely. ARS should only be implemented into today’s classrooms, still allowing room for traditional methods. Another reason why I feel this way is because ARS allows the students to be tested only certain ways, like multiple choice and true and false. In order for students to be successful in future educational years, they need to learn to test many ways, like short answer and essay. Short answer allows students to express themselves and explain a concept in their own terms, which I believe is truly important to student learning and student achievement. ARS, as with every new technology, is a great way keeping things new and exciting in the classroom, but if it is overused, will become boring and dull in no time.
SUMMARY:
Larry J. Barnes, the author of this article, is a sophomore Biology teacher at Wood River High School in Hailey, Idaho. Barnes was highly inspired by Thomas Lord’s constructivist teaching style in a college classroom setting. Barnes had made many earlier attempts in trying to drift away from the traditional teacher-centered classroom of lectures and note-taking. Barnes wanted to take some of the methods he has seen in many college classrooms and implement in his high school classes to create a more constructivist learning environment. For instance, one change he made was to eliminate the rows of single lined desks and place them in cooperative groups of 3 to 4 students instead. He would assign activities such as group problem solving where the cooperative groups were each given a biology problem at the beginning of the class that they had to work together on. He also tried a peer-teaching approach within each cooperative group, which seems to be very similar to that of “jigsaw”. With this, students would educate themselves on a topic in the unit they are currently studying and then teach their fellow group members. However, activities like this were soon eradicated because students showed signs of being lost when solving hard problems and some would simply recite the entire text when peer-teaching. This is when Barnes was introduced to the Audience Response System, or ARS.
The ARS is a new tool known to increase student engagement and participation. It is very popular at the college level, and Barnes wanted to see if he could implement it in a high school class. His study uses an ARS called Wisdom in hope that it will allow the elimination of lecture and note-taking methods. All students will experience both lecture-based and lecture-free teaching methods. Barnes will compare the assessments and learning gains from the experimental lecture-free group to the traditional lecture-based group.
The experiment consisted of a total of 43 students, who learned the material of three units by both lecture-based and lecture-free methods. A pre and post test was given to every student for all three units studied. Only the lecture-free and lecture-based method rotated in the classes, the classroom procedures, labs, policies, videos, etc. were exactly the same throughout the entire study. In the lecture-free classes, the students were in collaborative groups of 3 or 4, with a Qwisdom Q5 radio frequency remote for each student. Each unit, about 50 to 60 questions were answered using the remote, varying from multiple answers, multiple choice, numeric, and sequence-type. Student responses appeared on the teacher computer monitor immediately after they were being answered, so Barnes could monitor the student’s comprehension. Once all students’ Qwisdom scores were between 70 and 100%, he revealed the answers and reviewed the answers that students seemed to struggle with. In the lecture-based method, Barnes used PowerPoint notes. He handed out outlines that were only partly filled in. During the lecture, the students, still in cooperative learning groups, had to fill in the missing information. Barnes observed a lot of passive behavior during the lecture, because many students worked with their team to fill in as much information as they could before the lecture began.
After surveying the students about their views, it seems they favored the lecture-free method over the lecture-based. Students said they learned more and had to think for themselves more with the lecture-free method. A small percentage thought the lecture-free was slightly more frustrating. It was unanimous however, that the students all enjoyed working in small groups with the electronic remotes, rather than individually answering work sheet type questions. The results of the learning gains from the lecture-free method were not significantly higher than the lecture-based method as previously suggested to be. The two methods had almost equal learning gains in the end, with the lecture-free method being only slightly higher. However, since the students seemed to show great interest in the ARS, and their participation and attention levels were higher, I believe it is a great method to implement in today’s high school classrooms, still having to take in financial standings of schools.
REACTION:
In my opinion, I think introducing new methods in the classroom is a great idea. Not only does it capture the students’ interest, but it keeps things fun, new, and exciting. Making use of the new technology in the world is very important to the education of students’ today. Having something like this handheld electronic remote is a successful way in improving student participation, they want to answer the questions because they want to use the remote. However, just as with everything else, if you do something all the time and over use a particular method, it is going to get old and boring. I think the ARS is a great new teaching method, but I do not think that it should replace lectures and note-taking entirely. ARS should only be implemented into today’s classrooms, still allowing room for traditional methods. Another reason why I feel this way is because ARS allows the students to be tested only certain ways, like multiple choice and true and false. In order for students to be successful in future educational years, they need to learn to test many ways, like short answer and essay. Short answer allows students to express themselves and explain a concept in their own terms, which I believe is truly important to student learning and student achievement. ARS, as with every new technology, is a great way keeping things new and exciting in the classroom, but if it is overused, will become boring and dull in no time.
Courtney L.
Audience Response System (Link to Article)